The above question comes up during many conversations. The answer comes in the same ways we read books. Mom can read it with her fingers. She can read the book as an audio book in a few different ways. She can use digital books on her braille computer. We will explore these options below.
Print Braille Books. There are a number of companies that sell these amazing books. National Braille Press, Seedlings books, American Printing House just to name a few. Growing up my mom enrolled in NBPs book club where we got one new book a month. It was fun to have mom read to us. We could still see the pictures on the page. As we got older we helped read with her. Here are a few pictures of what the print braille books look like.
I have many memories of us losing power and mom pulling the stack of books off the shelf and reading for hours. Mom also read us to sleep most nights. She would get braille books from the library for us and would sit and read to us until we fell asleep. I think we all enjoy reading in our own ways because it was a normal part of the day. Plus we got bragging rights to how our mom could still read to us when the power went out 
Cassette Tapes and CD Books Yes, I am old enough to remember cassette tapes and actually still have a number of them myself and still use them!
Did you know that most Cassette tape players, CD players, and boomboxes are already adapted for blind people? As you will be able to see in the pictures below each button has a visual picture, but most of the time that is a tactile picture too.
So the record button is always a circle. The Rewind button is always an arrow facing to the left. The play button is a triangle with the point facing the direction the tape will feed. The fast forward button is an arrow facing toward the right. the pause button has two vertical lines side by side. And the stop/eject button is a square with a triangle on top with the point facing the top of the machine. How cool is that! So you don’t have to memorize the buttons to play your tape/CD you can just feel for the button shape you need. This is also true of CD players and boomboxes. I think it is so neat that we have the visual and tactile clues.
My mom got a lot of tapes and CDs for books. I enjoy audio books. And my mom even recorded a few old books for me on cassette tape and I love listening to them.
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NLS Player National Library Service offers a free audio book player to people who have visual impairments. This device runs on cartridges and also allows you to download audio books onto a thumb drive and then listen to them through the player. Its about the size of a regular print book. And it has braille buttons, color coordinated buttons, and also arrows. This is one of the newer ones.
My moms first library machine used plastic (thinner than normal) records on a special record player. It was bulky. She read Readers Digest on it! Then she got a cassette player which worked well. And over the last 8-10 years I can’t remember exactly when they came out with this new machine. It is nice because you ca either request books from your local library that services the machine. Or log into a few websites and download exactly what yo want!
This player is super nice and works well. It has a battery pack which allows you to charge it up and take it on the go. Mom and I listened to a trilogy not long after she got it on one of our road trips. It was really nice to have something to listen to on the drive. And Mom ad I got to enjoy the book together. How about digital audio books? Do you every download audio books and listen on your devices? I have found some great places to buy audio books and love having something to help on long drives or just to listen while my hands are busy!
Here the link to the National Library service website where blind people can access E-books. Most of these can be read either with their computer screen readers or on a braille computer. The main website that works with the NLS player is https://nlsbard.loc.gov/cgi-bin/nlsbardprod/index.cgi You can sometimes find other e-books in a pdf (not scanned pdf) format where they can be read on a computer. Not everyone is a braille user so having the option of audio is also very helpful. Here is what a braille computer looks like!
We will talk more about braille computers next month. I hope you have enjoyed this months talk about how #blindpeopleread
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